Not speaking for Rohme, but it sounds similar to something i have also observed.

A range of degrees could perhaps be more elegantly described as the useful operational envelope for a concept (theory) that maps to a certain range of pattern.

Within the envelope, changes in ‘degrees’ result in changes that are largely linear and easily predictable.

But at certain extremes, once you start butting up against the ‘edges’ of the envelope, you start to reach abrupt ‘tipping points’; further changes in degrees start having exponentially greater effects, not predictably behaving in the same way of the whole range of previous changes in degrees behaved. The framework starts breaking down; in fact, is shifting into something else.

The classic example of this is how the mechanics of relativity are appropriate for describing the motions of practically all manner of objects in a huge range of sizes, from cosmically big to microscopically small. Changes in the ‘degree’ here (volume, mass, density, etc) result in changes that are largely linear and coherently ‘stepwise’ wrt the whole range of possible changes.

Once you start dealing with things that are *really* small though, *really* dense, *really* massive, you reach tipping points. The theory breaks down because, in fact, the dynamic *itself* in reality is breaking down; morphing into a thing that is *different*.

Here’s a more parochial example: the electroweak forces in your hand and the ones in, say, a table, interact pretty much the same way across an indefinitely large range of ranges. Which is to say, hardly at all. Weather you wave your hand around 10 feet away from it, or 10 millimeters away from it, its effects remain predictably negligible. But once you hand gets reeeaaaly close though, things change; you reach a tipping point. All of a sudden each further degree of distance closed results in an exponentially greater effect than the degree before it, in the form of repulsion, as you hand comes into ‘contact’ with the table.

States are ontologically ‘sticky’; the way most people define the difference between one thing and another is with a ruleset that applies the same way to both; a dividing line. It may be more appropriate to think of it more like a ‘membrane’; something that is in one state could push up against the edge of its envelope, and it starts to ‘flex’, overlapping into features/territory that might normally occupied by the other state, and vice versa, yet still remain in its own state. It takes extra degrees to ‘pop’ the envelope, and shift from one state to another. Else, it can remain the same or rebound back with no formal change.

A good example of this principle applied in praxis is the takedown and riding time rules in NCAA collegiate wrestling.

If both wrestlers are in neutral, and one of them manages to get behind the other on their feet with a bodylock, he is not considered taken down yet; the attacking wrestler must force his torso to touch the ground or at least down to both knees and a hand.

On the other hand, if one competitor is in the down position and the other is in top position, then if the down wrestler manages to stand up to his feet while the other still has a bodylock behind him, he is not considered to have escaped yet; the escaping wrestler must break the attacking wrestlers hands apart and fully turn to face him.

So in both cases you have the same situation – standing bodylock from behind – but two different states depending on which state you started in. A more spergmatic thinker might be frustrated by the apparent contradiction; such is why the theories they create, their ideologies, their modes of thought, almost invariably explode spectacularly ere they come into contact with reality Outside.

Definitions based on ‘dividing line’ principles are fragile and easily run into failure modes; definitions that are on ontologically sticky are robust and adaptable, for such more appropriately coheres with the motions of Being itself.

The ‘joints’ of reality lie between such envelopes and tipping points.

▬» Apologies in advance for being the bearer of bad tidings, but it is time to take this whole fake news thing seriously. We all laughed, didn’t we, when the spread of misinformation played a decisive role in Brexit. “Oh, well!” That’s what we chortled. Similarly, we quickly dismissed fake news as just a bit of fun when its cheery deployment helped to propel Donald Trump into the Oval Office. It seemed as if the lols would never cease. But the fun is over now and we must face the facts: fake news may actually not be ideal. It may even be bad. Because, this week, it has finally gone too far. It has hit Katy Perry’s new album campaign. »

Even in such case of self inflicted amnesia there is some dominant or transforming force which can be estetically (is it just wind and sand or some one actually plays violin in a desert) or mathematically formalised (Feynman Path Integral).

▬» For someone who does not exist — at least the way you or I do — Netochka Nezvanova has a fearsome reputation. She’s a gifted computer programmer and polemicist, an artist and a pain-in-the-ass, a critic of capitalism and fascism, as well as a capitalist and a marketer.

Artists use her software, Nato.0+55, to manipulate video for live performance and installations. But some see Netochka herself as a work of art, an online spectacle many years running that’s one of the Net’s great performances.

Netochka is the human face of a software tool kit used to sample and morph digital video in real time. Netochka gives the interviews and makes the appearances at digital art and technology conferences to promote the software. Except that when she shows up in person, she’s frequently embodied by different women.

Is one of them the real Netochka and the others a bunch of understudies? No one but Netochka knows, and she’s not telling. She explains — sort of — via e-mail in her inimitable hackerese: “NN’s reputation is based on mouth 2 mouth adverti.cement. When something is very well konstruckted and designed with a degree of integrity it stands on its own … All the cool girls wear NN.”

The name Netochka Nezvanova is a pseudonym borrowed from the main character of Fyodor Dostoevski’s first novel; it translates loosely as “nameless nobody.” »

That’s pretty amusing considering how fond many people on the left are of talking about “erasing some group’s actual lived experiences”. Except apparently, the experiences of living under actual communism, when it fails. That’s one group of underdogs that doesn’t deserve attention. After all, failing communism was their own fault, if only they had been better people it would have worked this time!

The global media was being used to promote a “virtual reality” of a “student movement being repressed by an authoritarian government”, he argued. “What government in the world hasn’t committed political or economic mistakes? But does that justify the burning down of universities or the overthrow of an elected government?”The protests, often led by students and overwhelmingly in well-off areas, have included arson attacks on government buildings, universities and bus stations.

▬» Attempts to conceptualise the relationship between truth and political action have been pervasively hindered by the pejorative attitude of those who have tried to explain it. There is a sneer implicit in almost any academic or journalistic discussion of conspiracy theories, a knowing smirk that says, implicitly or outright, ‘Imagine believing such stupid things, when we, after all, know better!’ As the power differential sustaining this attitude has begun to collapse, the smirk has transformed into overt fear, disgust, and anger: ‘Post-truth politics’, ‘fake news’: ‘How dare they believe these things?’ In its most acute form, the reaction has been melded into sweeping Platonic denunciations of the principle of democracy itself, which present millennia-old defences of oligarchy as trendy liberal opinions. This is hardly by accident: as we can already see in Plato himself, the flight from democratic politics, indeed from all politics, and the obsession with abstract truth are intimately connected.

In reality, this devotion to ‘the truth’ has proven itself concerned with ‘facts’ in only the shallowest sense. What is striking, indeed, is how often the people who are fastest to decry ‘post-truth politics’ are simply wrong …»

▬» The curious claim of Angela Merkel that ‘the history of the printing press’ shows the need to ‘find the right kind of policies to contain this and to manage and steer this’ is characteristic of the liberal response to the entry of the Internet into politics. »

▬» Just as in the 18th century, indeed, the conspiracy theorist is closer to an authentic engagement with the reality of politics than the entirely uncritical establishmentarian who protests endlessly in favour of a ‘truth’ constructed by power without ever examining the forces underlying it. As Hardt and Negri noted,

The spectacle of politics functions as if the media, the military, the government, the transnational corporations, the global financial institutions, and so forth were all consciously and explicitly directed by a single power even though in reality they are not. »

Conspiracy is best understood, if taken to its roots. As a natural artifact of speciation. Things spirate together, against. It is no surprise. No “post-truth”. It is truth.

A discussion on why knights fight snails(; bcz accelerationism?) in the general Video Games forum on Reddit turns into Kek.

About the snail video, the very interesting part is how the Lombards, once conquerors of the Italian landmass, become, after losing to another tribe/dynasty/bloodline/race restricted to the lender and pawnbroker class, and that anti-Lombardic propaganda ensues, very similar to a type of anti-Semitism.